How the process really works in Pa.
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How the process really works in Pa.
How the process really works in Pa.
Pennsylvania earned a reputation for having some of the most blatant gerrymandering in the country after the 2010 census. Perhaps most infamous among many of the state’s bizarrely shaped districts is the 7th Congressional district, which has been described as looking like Goofy kicking Donald Duck.
Maps drawn by Republicans after the 2010 census helped GOP candidates win 13 of the state’s 18 seats in Congress, despite Democratic candidates winning 83,000 more votes statewide. That’s an efficiency gap of 24 percent — more than three times what plaintiffs in Gill v. Whitford say should be the threshold for unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering.
Regardless of which way the U.S. Supreme Court rules in the Wisconsin case, lawmakers will have to redraw legislative districts after the 2020 Census.
Republicans control the General Assembly, but that doesn’t give them total control over what the maps will look like.
The congressional maps go through the normal legislative process — a bill passed by the General Assembly and signed or vetoed by the governor. Expect that to come up in the 2018 gubernatorial race.
State House and Senate districts take a different path. The state Constitution gives responsibility for drawing those maps to a five-member Legislative Reapportionment Commission comprised of the House and Senate caucus leaders and a chairman they elect. If the two Democrats and two Republicans can’t agree on a chairman (and they never do), the state Supreme Court picks one. Democrats outnumber Republicans on the court 5-2.
The commission’s maps need only survive legal challenges. If they do, they become law automatically.